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Jury Orders Samsung to Pay Apple $290M for Infringing

SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) - Samsung must pay Apple $290 million for infringing key iPhone and iPad patents to produce 13 products in its Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets, a federal jury decided Thursday afternoon.

The eight-person jury took less than 14 hours to reach its verdict in a retrial over some of the damages a different jury handed to Apple last year. In March, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh carved out half of the original $1.05 billion verdict after finding the first jury failed to follow her directions and botched the calculations.

Apple claimed that Samsung "slavishly copied" a number of its iDevice utility and design patents in a rush to put out its competing Galaxy smartphones and tablets. For its part, Samsung has maintained that it has simply followed technology - and Apple can't stand the competition.

Today's $290 million verdict - less than what Koh sliced but closer to the $380 million Apple wanted than the $52 million Samsung thought fair - adds to the nearly $600 million Koh left standing from the original verdict.

The jury found that the Samsung Infuse 4G and the Droid Charge damaged Apple the most, and awarded $100 million and $60 million for those products respectively. Most of the 13 Samsung products at issue in this go-round are already obsolete and have been replaced by other products.

Apple meanwhile still faces difficulties with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over its patents. Earlier this week, the USPTO opined that one of the patents at issue in the retrial, the "pinch to zoom" action, is not a valid patent - news that caused Samsung to demand an emergency stay, even as the jury continued to deliberate.

Although Apple filed a response to the stay motion this morning, Koh never ruled on it and is presumably moot now.

While the verdict is hardly a surprise to industry insiders, a final request by jurors just prior to entering the courtroom for the verdict was. The six-woman, two-man jury - perhaps aware of their place in technology-related legal history - asked Koh for color copies of the artist's sketches of the jury.

Koh has not offered a response to that note.

On Wednesday, jurors complained about the prospect of having to eat deli sandwiches for a third day. Koh allowed them to order lunch from an area Thai restaurant Thursday.

Two hours later, they announced they'd reached a verdict.

Most of the jurors said during the selection process that they had some tech knowledge, and four admitted to owning iPhones in the past. None had ever owned a Samsung smartphone, however, and one juror said she didn't have a cellular phone at all.

Both sides square off again in a second patent showdown over newer products, including the iPhone 5, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 10.1, in Koh's courtroom beginning March 31, 2014.

Meanwhile, Samsung is expected to add this verdict to its appeal of the original trial, currently slated for either late 2014 or early 2015 in the Federal Circuit.

Apple is represented in this action by Harold McElhinny of the San Francisco firm Morrison Foerster. Charles Verhoeven, of the firm Quinn Emanuel, represents Samsung.

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